The late war in Mexico has afforded a striking modern instance of the truth of this proposition. The Christianity of the native Mexican Indians, according to a writer in the Pall Mull Gazette (July, 1867), "is of a very crude and undeveloped kind, and indeed it is very doubtful whether in some parts of the country it has ever really eradicated the old religion. But it is quite certain that it has not eradicated the old superstitions. Just as many Pagan feasts in Southern Italy have been converted into Christian feasts by mere change of name, so has the Christianity of the Mexicans been grafted on to their old belief and superstitions, and although they may not quite have believed that the arrival of the Emperor Maximilian was really the fulfilment of the long promised second advent of their ancient god Quetzalcoatle, yet he nevertheless had a white face and a yellow beard, and came from the West in a ship, and was of an illustrious descent, and there is no doubt of the fact that the Mexican Indians received him with open arms, and with a more or less superstitious veneration, looking to him for the regeneration of their country and for a release from the dominion of the Spanish creoles."
The Maories, like several branches of the Aryan race, deified, during life, some of their own warriors. "Watches and white men also were at first regarded as deities; the latter," says Sir John Lubbock, "not perhaps unnaturally, as being armed with thunder and lightning." The Dyaks of Saráwak regard the late Sir James Brooke as a species of deity. After explaining the conditions under which they lived previous to his advent amongst them, and the vast amelioration in the conditions of their existence attendant upon his rule, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, in his "Malay Archipelago," says,—
"And the unknown stranger who had done all this for them, and asked for nothing in return, what could he be? How was it possible for them to realise his motives? Was it not natural that they should refuse to believe he was a man? for of pure benevolence combined with great power, they had had no experience amongst men. They naturally concluded that he was a superior being, come down upon earth to confer blessings upon the afflicted. In many villages where he had not been seen, I was asked strange questions about him. Was he not as old as the mountains? Could he not bring the dead to life? And they firmly believe that he can give them good harvests, and make their fruit trees bear an abundant crop."
Historians are now pretty generally satisfied, from the combined evidences of philology, ethnology, and tradition, that the bulk of the European nations had a common origin in the East, and that some Asiatic tribes are descendent from the same original stock. I am not, however, insensible to the value of the fact that the early action and thought of all tribes or nations present a certain amount of resemblance, on account of the similar conditions to which each has been subjected. The aborigines of Australia, the South Sea Islands, and America, procured fire by means of an instrument similar to the "chark" of the modern Hindoos and their Aryan ancestors, but they did not give it the same name. The modern Jews, of Semitic origin, sacrifice the common fowl on the eve of the Feast of the Atonement. The belief in the mystical character of chanticleer is equally shared by the Lancashire and Cornish peasant, the Norseman, the Welshman, the ancient Roman, the modern Hindoo, and some of the North-African tribes. Mr. Lapham, in describing the "Animal Mounds" of Wisconsin, speaks of one carved into the shape of a great serpent, in Adams County. He says,—"Conforming to the curve of the hill, and occupying its very summit, is the serpent, its head resting near the point, and its body winding back for seven hundred feet, in graceful undulations, terminating in a triple coil at the tail. The entire length, if extended, would be not less than one thousand feet.... The outline of the work is clearly and boldly defined.... The neck of the serpent is stretched out, and slightly curved, and its mouth is opened wide, as if in the act of swallowing or ejecting an oval figure, which rests partially within the distended jaws. This oval is formed by an embankment of earth, without any perceptible opening, four feet in height, and is perfectly regular in outline, its transverse and conjugate diameters being one hundred and sixty, and eighty feet, respectively." This looks, certainly, very like the gigantic Scotch serpent mound, referred to at page [51] of this work, and the huge worm hills of Durham and the North of England. Sir John Lubbock has treated this branch of the subject exhaustively in his recent work on "The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man."
The Arabs and other Semitic tribes worshipped the sun as well as the Aryans. The sun and fire worship, likewise, was found to obtain in more than one state on the discovery of South America. Many writers have arrived at the conclusion that "there was communication between the Old World and America in very remote times." Mr. Baldwin (Pre-historic Nations, p. 393) contends that "the antiquities of Mexico and Central America reveal religious symbols, devices, and ideas nearly identical with those found in all countries of the Old World where Cushite communities formerly existed. They show us planet worship with its usual orphic and phallic accompaniments. Humboldt, having travelled in America, and observed remains of these civilisations, was convinced that such communications formerly existed. He found evidence of it in the religious symbols, the architecture, the hieroglyphics, and the social customs made manifest by the ruins, which he was sure came from the other side of the ocean; and, in his view, the date of this communication was older than 'the present division of Asia into Chinese, Mongols, Hindus,' etc. Humboldt did not observe symbols of phallic worship, but the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg shows that they were described by Spanish writers at the time of the Conquest. He points out that they were prevalent in the countries of Mexico and Central America, being very abundant at Colhuacan, on the Gulf of California, and at Panuco. Colhuacan was a flourishing city, and the capital of an important kingdom; 'there,' he says, 'phallic institutions had existed from time immemorial.' At Panuco phallic symbols abounded in the temples and on the public monuments. These, with the serpent devices, the sun worship, and the remarkable knowledge of astronomy that existed in connection with them, show a system of religion of which the Abbé is constrained to say: 'Asia appears to have been the cradle of this religion, and of the social institutions which it consecrated.'" The ancient traditions preserved by the inhabitants seem to countenance this view. They speak of a race of "bearded white men who came across the ocean from the East."
A writer in a recent number of the Gentleman's Magazine has the following pertinent remarks on this curious and interesting subject:—"One fact corroborative of the idea that the Old World, or at least some of the inhabitants of Asia, were once aware of the existence of America before its discovery by Columbus, is that many of the Arabian ulema with whom I have conversed on this subject are fully convinced that the ancient Arabian geographers knew of America; and, in support of this opinion, point to passages in old works in which a country to the west of the Atlantic is spoken of. An Arab gentleman, a friend of mine, General Hussein Pasha, in a work he has just written on America, called 'En-Nesser-Et Tayir,' quotes from Djeldeki and other old writers to show this."
This writer favours the view that the Chinese, at a very remote period, became acquainted with the American continent, via the Pacific Ocean. Some writers regard the inscription on the celebrated Dighton rock, on the east bank of the Taunton river, as Phœnician. This, however, has been disputed. Others regard it as commemorative of an Indian triumph at some remote period.
Dr. Charles Frederick Winslow, in his recently published work, "Force and Nature," expresses himself strongly in favour of the truth of the presumed ancient communication between the Asian and the American continents. He says:—
"In order to sustain this position, I might, were it admissible, adduce here, as collateral proof, an important and hitherto unpublished fact, of an archæological character, in addition to my geographical and geological observations made upon the coasts and islands of the Pacific Ocean. The fact is this, brought to my knowledge by an unusually extensive practice of my profession, that a uniform custom of dorsocision has existed throughout the Polynesian islands from periods unknown, and beyond all tradition, embracing alike New Zealand, Esther Island, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and Hawaii—a rite wholly different from, but similar in its results to, the Jewish one of circumcision; and that this has been performed at the eighth or ninth year in all of them, and transmitted by father to son, with undeviating precision, from generation to generation. A fact of this character so deeply rooted in the moral, social, and traditional life of many peoples thus widely distributed throughout that vast ocean, so remotely separated from each other, and without intercourse, indicates even more strongly than colour, caste or language, not only the unity of their progenitors, but also the wide-spread existence of a single race, the vestiges of which were left here and there above the waters when the land sank between America and Asia, and received the older seas into a new basin."
Various hypotheses have been suggested as to the direction in which the flora of the "Old World," and especially of the miocene division of the tertiary formations, migrated to America, or vice versa. Heer, the celebrated Swiss naturalist, favours the Atlantic route, and regards certain important relations between the fauna of the continents of Europe and America as corroborative, to some extent, at least, of the truth of the statement of the Egyptian priests to Plato, that there, at one time, existed a continent named Atlantis, in the midst of the space now occupied by the Atlantic ocean. Sir Charles Lyell, however, on geological grounds, dissents from this view, and rather inclines to the one propounded by Dr. Asa Gray and Mr. Bentham, that the route of the migration was in the opposite or Pacific direction, "and took a course four times as long across America and the whole of Asia." Lyell says,—"It is the enormous depth and width of the Atlantic which makes us shrink from the hypothesis of a migration of plants, fitted for a sub-tropical climate in the Upper Miocene period, from America to Europe, by a direct course from west to east. Can we not escape from this difficulty by adopting the theory that the forms of vegetation common to recent America and Miocene Europe, first extended from east to west across North America and passed thence by Behring's Straits and the Aleutian Islands to Kamtschatka, and thence by land, placed between the 40th and 60th parallels of latitude where the Kurile Islands and Japan are now situated, and thence to China, from which they made their way across Asia to Europe?"